The general boundary formulation (GBF) is an atemporal, but spacetime local formulation of quantum theory. Usually it is presented in terms of the amplitude formalism, which, in the presence of a background time, recovers the pure state formalism of the standard formulation of quantum theory. After reviewing the essentials of the amplitude formalism I will introduce a new "positive formalism", which recovers instead a mixed state formalism.

In
a generic quantum experiment we have a given set of devices analyzing some
physical property of a system. To each device involved in the experiment we
associate a set of random outcomes corresponding to the possible values of the
variable analyzed by the device. Devices have apertures that permit physical
systems to pass through them. Each aperture is labelled as "input" or
"output" depending on whether it is assumed that the aperture lets
the system go inside or outside the device. Assuming a particular input/output

The fact that the quantum wavefunction of a many-particle system is a function on a high-dimensional configuration space, rather than on spacetime, has led some to suggest that any realist understanding of quantum mechanics must regard configuration space as more fundamental than spacetime. Worse, it seems that a wavefunction monist ontology cannot help itself to talk of "configuration space" at all, without particles for the configurations to be configurations of.

I will discuss the central role of correlations in
thermodynamic directionality, how strong correlations can distort the
thermodynamic arrow and contrast these distortions in both the classical and
quantum regimes. These distortions constitute non-linear entanglement witnesses,
and give rise to a rich information-theoretic structure. I shall explain how
these results are then cast into the language of fluctuation theorems to derive
a generalized exchange fluctuation theorem, and discuss the limitations of such
a framework.